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D2X ME Set and Unique Items | ||
Pictures and some commentary on the items here, scroll down for an overview of the mod and the main differences between it and D2X. All item shots are from v1.08 of it, which corresponds to v1.09 of D2X. The Mod is a nearly total conversion, so almost all items have new names and stats, and due to the much higher difficulty of the mod and other balance changes (defense matters, blocking is harder, few hps charms, etc) what's worth using in the mod varies a lot from what's best to use in regulation D2X. I have intentionally not obtained the stats from the spreadsheets (other than the names of the sets once I'd found 18 and wondered if there were more) since that would be too much like work, and I've done plenty of that on the D2 site. And will again, when/if v1.10 is released. Taking screenshots while I play, and then cropping a bunch of them and putting them on a page is fun, and a hobby. Plus it's fun when every new item is a surprise. At least that's what I keep telling myself.
Uniques are generally lower quality than good rares in the mod. Especially Elites. Lots of Exceptional Uniques can be found on the same type of item when it spawns Elite; they will have the same name and bonuses, but with somewhat lower defense or damage due to the elite base item being higher stats. And have much higher requirements. Due to the way the mod prefers to drop excep/elite items in hell, I have found very few normal uniques. A nice change from D2X there.
Item Sets Full = full set bonus shown. All = No full bonus shown. • Armory of Aragorn - Full None of the sets in ME are much good, and hardly any of the individual set items are either. You can pretty safely ignore them all. Most sets are just 3 items, with a few 4 item sets, and very few have stats to make them worth using.
Miscellaneous Screenies
The mod is far harder than D2, and a near-total conversion. every monster name is different, almost every item name is different, all items have been rebalanced including more or less dmg, swing speed, requirements, etc. Spears are fast but lower dmg, polearms are slower but bigger damage, Xbows are slower but bigger dmg, etc. Most items have different inventory graphics for excep and elite. This can make it quite hard to figure out which item type is which. There is no full list of item types that I know of, and the names in armor.txt and weapons.txt are not what they use in the game, in most cases. The item names file is a .tbl, which requires a different program to view, and I've never bothered with it. Do not go running out of the rogue camp with a new char on players 8 and expect to survive. You will not. Start off slowly, once you've got some hps and equipment up the players X to 3 or 4 for better exp. Starting off is slow and much more difficult than D2X. The cow level is gone. No Wirt at all in travincal. So put that cheesey bonus land out of your mind, and plan your char for real levels accordingly. There are a lot of new monster types, including a couple from D1, and all three of the Ancients appear through the game as basic monster types, as do the Druid's summoned wolves and bears. Several monsters are gone entirely, and others play much differently. Monsters are harder, have more hps, and hit harder. They are also worth less exp late game. They drop more however, with 2 items from every boss and champion, and there are far more bosses/champs. Act Bosses have lower bonuses to item quality, and are not worth the trouble, aside from possibly running Baal for the best chance at super items. Dol Guldar (Travincal) is the best item run place; every council and minion drops 2 items. You'll want to move up to act 5 eventually though, in hell. Baal runs are profitable but dangerous. The cave under the Ancient's Way is a great run also, bosses/champs galore. Very few monsters are PI, so you can go with just melee attack 99% of the time. This is good since there aren't any easy ways to get big elemental damage; you won't find the 1-450 lightning on weapons like in D2X, nor constant 1-9x light damage jewels. Even Stone Skin bosses in hell can be killed with physical, though it will take a while. Physical resistance varies a lot between monster types, and it's mostly logical; knights with big armor on take less damage. The goddamned glow worms in late Act Five seem to have about the highest physical resistance, and any SS boss of those will be PI, and their champions take a lot of hits. Elemental resistances on monsters are common and vary a lot. You will have no success playing a one tree Sorceress, and even with two trees you'll struggle with numerous dual immune bosses. You'll need something to kill with from every tree to be all powerful. An alternative is to get your merc some decent Crushing Blow and let him melee the FILIs. Beware of dragons. They are Lister-class monsters, found randomly, not in packs except for champs/bosses. There are 3 types of them; Cave and Fire can be frozen, Cold can not, not even by Holy Freeze. Stun them or they will devour your minions. They are worth a ton of exp and drop like champs though; very profitable if you can take them. Dragons are found only in the later areas of act 5. With holy freeze Cave and Fire dragons aren't too difficult. Nazguls (Oblivion Knights) curse up a storm and may be found in the river and/or chaos in act 4. Iron Maiden hurts, but it is not instantly fatal as in D2X, since the returned damage is less. This makes them playable for melee characters, with some caution. The most common PI in the game is the balrog seal boss in the CS. Do the right wing first if you are doing a Diablo run, since he's a show stopper for most characters if he spawns with SS. Monster curses last much less time than in D2X, so a trip to town just to get rid of Cursed after killing the boss isn't necessary. A good change. Do not go around cursed, you will die. Succubi are vastly improved, and you will need high fire resistance or they'll stun lock and murder you in hell and even in nightmare. Several types deal fire/physical damage with their bloodstars, and can curse you with amplify damage, greatly increasing the damage you take from their shots (not to mention melee monsters)
General and items The games difficulty increases rapidly from act to act, as does the exp. Do not stay in act 5 normal or nightmare, move up to act 1 nm/hell, and you'll find it easier, and more profitable. Act 5 hell is a LOT harder than Act 4 hell. Act 2 and 3 hell are close to act 5/nm in overall difficulty. The resistance penalty is much less, so it's pretty easy with good rares to get all strong resistances in hell. Lightning is very important, fire is less so, cold doesn't matter (if you get can't be frozen), poison can be nasty, but leech counters it easily. Read the cubes 'n runes.txt! There are a lot of new recipes and all rune properties are changed. It's much easier to add MF and indestructible from runes, much harder to add damage. Runes drop much less often than in D2X, so even though you can cube them up, you'll never have enough to do this with past about #8 or 10. The cube is far larger, so some recipes have a lot of ingredients.
Mercs are mandatory, and very good tanks, much higher defense and a few more hps than they have in D2X. lower resistance penalties let them reach max resistances more easily. They do a bit less dmg than d2x. IAS gear makes a big difference for them. Life leech on mercs is very important, and very hard to get. You must get it on the weapon, or a couple of unique armors have it. Circlets do not get leech in the mod, so you can't gamble it. Holy freeze is huge and very useful. Might is less dmg than d2x, and very small radius, which makes it inconvenient. Blocking is nerfed, and it's very hard to keep your blocking over 55 or 60%. You need to add a lot of dex and find a quality blocking item. With a good shield at lvl 85 and about 200 dex, my paladin is blocking around 53%. he would be way over 75% in D2X. Charms drop much less often, and are generally very crappy. Like +2 fire damage grands. Prepare to throw most of them away. You can get some bigger bonuses on them, more MF or +stats (than in d2x) especially. +hps are very small, +mana is almost unheard of, FHR and faster run are very uncommon, as are resistance charms. I've never seen a lightning res or res all charm. Jewels can have up to 100% dmg, but drop less often, so good luck. IAS only goes to 10% on jewels, and is hard to find. MF goes up to 30%, but isn't much valued, with it on runes and gems more easily. I've seen one res all jewel ever, and it was 15%. There aren't any res all runes, other than in shields, so it's hard to find other than on rares. Gems are much improved, and diamonds in weapons early on are great, as are elemental gems. Perfect topazes add 50% MF in helms/armor, and are hard to pass up. All 3 types of light plate can have 6 sockets, so you do the math. Some hats can have 4 sockets, but generally rares are best for head gear, with socketed body armor for MF or other bonuses. Rare hats and boots and armor can have up to 51% MF, but there is no MF to be found on rare rings, amulets, gloves, belts, shields, or weapons. There are no uniques with huge MF ala Ali Baba/Gull/Skullders, so 6socket armor is really the way to go. It's easy to get 200-300% MF, you can get 300% just on 6s armor, after all, or 200% with 2 good sockets, and then pick up another 50% on your boots/hat. Belts, armor, and helms can have +15% mana or life. You want this badly. "No-DR" crafted items can get 10% or more max life/mana, and this can stack. You could, in theory, have crafted belt/armor/hat and be adding around 25% max life with all 3, and more from the crafting on gloves, shield, and boots. Getting 40 or 50% max hps is how you make up for the lack of good hps charms. Most elite items, normal/socketed/magical (but not rare/crafted/set/unique) have an inherent 1-10% reduce physical damage. So you could get a 6socket armor, socket a Tin rune, and have -19% physical damage. This is a good thing. Higher potential resistance is found on most items, and you can get -%damage on rare jewelry, up to 16%. You really need about 30 or 40% in this to survive melee in hell, even if you have good blocking. Blood Lord champions will do easily 600 per hit with their double swinging, and they are fast. Dragons can do as much or more, and hit with Zeal-like speed. Rares are very common, and you'll have a lot of money to gamble more. They are the best item in most cases, aside from lucky crafts and a very few unique items. Many mods occur on rares that you won't see in D2X. rings/amulets can have dual leech, and in fact you'll see this quite often, since leech is heavily weighted. The best weapons are rares. Some elite unique weapons are okay, but mostly they are like mediocre rares. The 3 socket rare recipe is the ultimate potential weapon, since you could get around 150% ED and +5% max damage per Clvl, and 3 sockets. Elite weapons do just a bit more damage than excep ones, in most cases. Bows and Xbows do much less dmg than in D2X, but you can still get a rare with 600% or more max damage. Crushing blow and fast hitting is the great equalizer. See the weapon discussion on the misc screens page for more specific details. I went down to less than half my previous damage with a faster weapon that had 19% more crushing blow, and my killing speed at least doubled, probably tripled, and the more hps the monsters have, the bigger the improvement. You hardly notice it on players 1, and it's all you notice on players 8. You get to about 40% crushing with a fast melee attack, and you can tear up Players 5/Hell. And it's far easier to get good crushing with with fast attack than a huge damage weapon. Save Rune #7. Do not cube them up! Save the Babas for bonus Runez! Swing speed and crushing is much > than bigger damage. Even on mercs.
Characters There are too many character skill changes to list. I've played 3 chars enough to comment on. Paladins - Fanat adds very little damage, but about the same speed and AR, and has a huge radius. Might adds the most damage, but has a very small radius. You must stay on top of your Might merc. Concentration has medium damage, but big radius and increases the chance for uninteruptable. Go with fanat, it's all about the speed and crushing blow. Zeal does 6 hits and adds damage. Vengeange is worthless, too little elemental dmg to bother with. Smite is great. Convert is good since it's bugged; monsters go to 1 hps when it wears off. Abusing this on Players 8 would be wrong. I assume this bug is for Asn with her convert also, but I've not tried it. Since elemental damage isn't really necessary, and it's all about fast hitting and crushing blow, a fanat/zealadin seems by far the most likely to be successful.
Amazons - Javazons are nerfed, since LF only sends out bolts on the first target, making Pierce sort of pointless other than for physical damage. Plus there is no secret cow level anymore. I have not played one, but you can get godly rare javelins, and can socket them, so they are potentially useful. Bowazons are nerfed also. MS only has 5 arrows, no matter the Slvl, and it costs a TON of mana early on. Adding points cuts the mana cost, but don't add to many or once you get decent damage and leech you'll have wasted the points. The lack of ability to use MS early on makes for a slow beginning. Guided does not pierce at all, so it's back to a utility skill, unless you go with a low dex build and need something for a guaranteed hit. Penetrate and Pierce are much nerfed, and you'll need to max penetrate and have a ton of Dex to have a to/hit over 80%. Expect your pierce to be about 40% lower than in D2X. Crushing only works at half the rate for ranged attacks, but you can get out a lot of arrows quickly, so it might still be worth going for, with a fast bow. Elite bow damage is much lower than in D2X, but it's not too hard to get a rare with over 350% max damage, which will take you into the low 200's. Might mercs have a tiny radius, so you have to stay right by him. Strafe works best for this, and is usually better than MS due to the number of arrows and lowered damage with MS.
Druids - I have only played a Fury druid, and he is much nerfed. Far less bonus to hps and AR from passives. Oak Sage is much less hps bonus. You can have 4 dire wolves, but the passives are nerfed for pets as well. elemental druids are still not viable. You run very fast in wolf form, about like you have 40% boots on all the time. You have greater range with your attacks. Fun, though you'll find it hard to target things on the run. I gave up my druid in act 5 NM when I was taking too much damage with no shield and had at least 500 fewer hps than I would have in D2X. Play a zealadin rather than a fury druid, if you're thinking about it.
Barbarians - Look to be about the same in most ways. BO is still awesome, as are the passives. Find Item is identical. WW is nerfed in damage and can not be used with a 2H weapon. Only with a 1h weapon and/or shield. I think frenzy would be quite viable if you had decent -% damage stuff, and two fast weapons, both with crushing stacking up. My next new character will be a Fury barb, and I think he'll play sort of like a zealadin late game, with a bit more damage and the potential to Hork all of the bosses and champions, for great finds. The 2 or 3x greater hps should cover most of the 55% less blocking, with a Holy freeze merc. If/when I do one I'll add info here about it.
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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
